Teaching basic lab skillsfor research computing

Workshop at Unicamp

A Software Carpentry workshop took place at Unicamp (State University of Campinas, Brazil) on May 23rd and 24th.
Raniere Costa was the host and lead instructor,
while Felipe Bocca, Monique Oliveira, and I completed the instructor’s team.

Day 1:
Although we had issues with the first booked classroom due to the student’s strike against budget cuts in public university education,
Renato Santos gave the Unix shell lesson without problems.
To solve the complication with facilities,
we found an available computational lab to continue the workshop
with the help of professor Doctor Francisco de Assis Magalhães Gomes Neto,
IMECC’s director.
After lunch, Felipe Bocca taught some R and then Raniere Costa taught RMarkdown.

Day 2:
We had the pleasure of welcoming Jonah Duckles,
executive director of the Software Carpentry Foundation.
I gave the first lesson on Git,
and after lunch Raniere Costa continued with the lesson.
A final lesson on R—the last of the workshop—was given by Felipe Bocca.
To finish,
Jonah Duckles encouraged the students to continue the learning started in the workshop
and also spoke about how to contribute and participate in the Software Carpentry community.

Conclusion:
Despite of the initial facility problem,
we managed to settle in and continue the workshop without loss in quality.
All of the instructors did their best to attend the student’s needs and expectations.
The feedback received from them was positive and most of them were interested in the Data Carpentry workshops.